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Articles Conference Reviews |
200747MorrisSession 4.7: The Final Cut: The Impact of Video Editing Software on Video Production in the Composition Classroom
Scott Dewitt (The Ohio State University) and Erin Smith (Michigan Technological University) This presentation focused on the uses of digital video in composition programs at Ohio State and Michigan Tech. They began their presentation with common assumptions made about video—that tools operate in the service of rhetoric, that too much time teaching technology is not also time teaching composition, and that product quality if not important as long as good rhetorical intent is evident. In many ways, this presentation refuted some of these assumptions in ways that would allow composition instructors to teach composition and video side by side, and also showed how Flash and Final Cut Pro allow for entirely different types of projects than iMovie and Windows Movie Maker do. Scott Dewitt’s presentation built, in part, off of the presentation he gave during the Sustaining Ecologies workshop on Thursday. He presented briefly on the history of digital media production at Ohio State, and talked again about sustaining practices on that campus. He then began to talk about student projects and had several examples to show us. One project was a movie project wherein he asked students to make a documentary style film using snapshots with interviewees’ voiceovers. He used one student’s project, in particular, as an example of what could be wrong with this type of assignment when using iMovie (or a similar tool). Specifically, the student overlaid pictures of drinking and drug use (much of it illegal) with interviews of students admitting to illegal drug use. He was asking them questions about the public service announcements they had encountered, yet still the student recognized that his friends could be in trouble if the video were ever shared online. Scott outlined how the student was currently using Flash to put this assignment together, and over a weekend completely remade the project to protect his subjects. The original assignment had only called for a slideshow. This student went ahead and created a cartoon person to talk for each subject, and was also able to include the public service announcements in the background of the flash animation on a small TV screen. The eventual product was much more useful, advanced, and meaningful than the assignment given—but would not have been producible on most video editing software. Despite the fact that we are sometimes moving away from Flash, Scott seemed to believe that it affords us some capabilities that movie editors don’t, and shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Erin’s students’ project centered on making a documentary film about a rowing competition. She decided to have an entire class work together on a single film to get as many different viewpoints as possible into it. She realized that editing all the film together at the end would cause plenty of problems, and so had the students make a film early in the term about a competition called the “ERG Monster” just to see what sorts of problems were occurring given their current skills. Students used iMovie for this project, and Erin immediately found some problems with the sort of composition and revision that is possible in iMovie. Students’ interviewing skills were clearly lacking, and they enjoyed making music videos more than including content (I liken this in my students’ own projects to including lots of graphics without actually having any text). However, when looking at how iMovie splits clips, includes sound, and splits sound from clips, Erin found that it was difficult for her to ask students to revise at all—she likened it to physical pain. For the final project, then, Erin knew that some things had to change. She began having students log how many hours they spend on the project each week via a centralized website. She also had them begin making transcripts of interviews that would be used to make cuts later. They would use these transcripts to make paper versions of each scene that would allow some concerns to be edited out in earlier stages. Additionally, they switched from using iMovie for editing to Final Cut Pro (Academic), which would allow for more editing and revision later in the design process which meant that she could ask students to make changes guilt-free. She showed the beginning of the students’ final project, which wasn’t polished yet but showed a noted improvement from the first project, and also proved that students had improved their interviewing skills. The editing wasn’t perfect (or even final) but showed more narrative structure. Erin said that she teaches video as she does writing, and needs to be able to include revision as part of that process. iMovie simply doesn’t give her the necessary tools to do that.
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